Viganò Looks Toward the Triumph of Mary’s Immaculate Heart — and Calls on the Faithful to Form a “Common Front” against “Il Maligno” (“The Evil One”)

The words above (at the top) are part of a longer passage from the prophet Isaiah, 42:5-17, cited by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, 78, at the outset of a new essay entitled “An Act of Accusation against Pope Francis and of Love for the Church” published this morning in Italy in Italian on the Italian website Corrispondenza Romana (link).

The Corrispondenza Romana site is directed by Italian Catholic historian Dr. Roberto de Mattei; de Mattei has been in contact with Viganò in recent weeks.

The text was also published in a slightly condensed form on Italian journalist Marco Tosatti‘s website, Stilum Curiae.

Also, American journalist Diane Montagna — author of an interesting book-length interview with Bishop Athanasius Schneider (link) — has published this morning an English-language summary of Viganò’s essay on the LifeSiteNews website, promising a complete English translation later today. (I plan to send out the complete text when that translation is posted…)

Viganò on Francis and Mary

Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò today published a brief but dramatic essay entitled “An Act of Accusation against Pope Francis and of Love for the Church” in which he sharply criticizes some of the recent statements of Pope Francis in regard to the Virgin Mary, and then condemns the “ambiguous” and “modernist” teachings of the present pontiff. (The full text in English is expected later today from LifeSiteNews.)

The essay seems clearly in part a response to remarks Pope Francis made about Mary on December 12, the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

(I note here an interesting report on the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe at the Abyssum website of retired Bishop Rene Henry Gracida of San Antonio, Texas, USA, who is now 95 years old: link. The information at this web site will take an hour or more to digest, so don’t click through if you do not want to take an hour learning about Our Lady of Guadalupe…)

In other words, Viganò felt impelled to write this essay by his own “Marian” devotion, feeling that Pope Francis a few days ago had somehow slighted the Blessed Virgin, somehow offered an offense to her great dignity, in remarks the Pope made in St. Peter’s Basilica on December 12.

Here are excerpts from a December 13 Crux article on what the Pope said on December 12:

CNS photo/Paul Haring

Pope calls idea of declaring Mary Co-redemptrix ‘foolishness’

By Inés San Martín

Dec 13, 2019 ROME BUREAU CHIEF

ROME — Pope Francis appeared to flatly reject proposals in some theological circles to add “co-redemptrix” to the list of titles of the Virgin Mary [Note: meaning that, through her purity, her sinlessness, her suffering, Mary — whose purity and sinlessness were admittedly protected and preserved through the merit and saving grace of her Son, the sole, unique Savior of the world, Jesus — did nevertheless also contribute in a mysterious, but real, way to His redeeming work, hence merits the title of “co-redemptrix”] saying the mother of Jesus never took anything that belonged to her son, and calling the invention of new titles and dogmas “foolishness.”

“She never wanted for herself something that was of her son,” Francis said. “She never introduced herself as co-redemptrix. No. Disciple,” he said, meaning that Mary saw herself as a disciple of Jesus. “Mary woman, Mary mother, without any other essential title,” Francis insisted. (…)

Here are links to other articles on what the Pope said on December 12, from Vatican News (link), Catholic News Agency (link) and a detailed statement from Dr. Mark Miravalle, leader of the movement in favor of proclaiming Mary as “Co-redemptrix” (link).

And here is a link to a petition made on December 12 by some Catholic to Pope Francis, protesting the perceived veneration of “Mother Earth” (Pachamama) in Catholic liturgies, instead of Mary (link).

Viganò’s Outrage

CNS photo/Gregory A. Shemitz, Lo

In quite strong language, Viganò responded to Pope Francis (the translations from the original Italian are my own and unofficial):

“On the occasion of the Feast of the Virgin of Guadalupe, Pope Bergoglio (sic) once again gave vent to his evident impatience with Mary, which evokes the impatience of the Serpent in the story of the Fall(!), in that Proto-Gospel that prophesies the radical enmity established by God between the Woman and the Serpent, and the declared hostility of the latter who, until the consummation of the world, will try to undermine the heel of the Woman and to triumph over her and her posterity. What the pontiff said is a manifest aggression toward the sublime prerogatives and attributes that make the Immaculate Ever-Virgin Mother of God the feminine complement to the mystery of the incarnate Word, intimately associated with Him in the Economy of Redemption.”

Viganò continued: “With a couple of jokes, he [Pope Francis] struck at the heart of the Marian dogmas, and of the Christological dogmas connected to it.”

And he added: “The Marian dogmas are the seal affixed to the Catholic truths of our faith, defined in the Councils of Nicaea, Ephesus and Chalcedon; they are the unbreakable bulwark against the Christological heresies and against the furious unleashing of the Gates of Hell. Those who ‘hybridize’ and profane them [that is, these Marian dogmas] show that they are on the side of the Enemy. Attacking Mary is attacking Christ himself. Attacking the Mother is rising up against the Son and rebelling against the very mystery of the Holy Trinity. The Immaculate Theotokos, ‘terrible as hosts and unfolded banners’ — acies ordinata (‘terrible as an army drawn up in battle array,’ Song of Songs 6:9) — will give battle to save the Church and will destroy the army of the Enemy who, released from the chains that held him, has declared war on her, and with his defeat, all the demonic pachamamas will return definitively to hell.”

The toughness of this language reflects a new attitude on Viganò’s part toward the situation of the Church.

In this text, we are moving far beyond a retired Vatican official who is focusing on the coverup of sexual abuse in the hierarchy — ugly and tragic as that type of coverup may be.

In this text, we find now a retired Vatican official speaking in apocalyptic terms of the loss of the Catholic faith itself — of final apostasy… beginning with the loss of due respect for the dignity of the Mother of God, Mary.

And this, just before Christmas, when we celebrate that birth that changed the universe, that reconciled mankind and God.

Viganò makes specific points, then his essay rises to a high point in his general conclusion.

He faults Pope Francis for not leading the Rosary with the faithful, “who filled the courtyard of San Damaso and the upper loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica during the time of St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI.”

And he faults him for “the enthronement of that Amazonian idol on the Altar of the Confession in St. Peter’s” (at the end of the Synod on the Amazon Region in October).

That moment was “nothing less than a declaration of war on the Lady and Patroness of all the Americas, who with her appearance to Juan Diego destroyed the demonic idols and conquered the Indians for Christ and for the adoration of the ‘Most True and Only God,’ thanks to her maternal Mediation.”

And he sums up: “And this is not a legend!”

Then the archbishop turns to the Church’s worship, her liturgy — the source and summit of Her spiritual life.

Viganò continues: “A few weeks after the events at the end of the Synod that signaled the investiture of pachamama at the heart of Catholicism, we learned that the Conciliar disaster of the Novus Ordo Missae [the New rite of the Mass] is undergoing further modernizations, including the introduction of the word “Rugiada” [the “dew-fall”] in the Eucharistic Canon instead of the mention of the Holy Spirit, the third Person of the Most Holy Trinity. This is a further step in the direction of regression towards naturalization and the immanentization of Catholic worship, towards a Novissimus Ordo that is pantheistic and idolatrous.”

In writing this, Viganò is suggesting that, by making a number of small changes in the liturgy, some Church leaders are even now preparing to alter the liturgy in profound ways in the near future.

Viganò then suggests that, when the Pachamama images were tossed into the Tiber River (on October 21), they were not really recovered from the Tiber by Rome’s police, because there is no videotape of the recovery.

“The fact that such a spectacular operation has not caught the attention of some passer-by, equipped with a mobile phone to film and then relaunch the scoop on social networks, is also quite incredible,” he adds.

The suggestion is that the images that were presented as recovered were other copies of the same images, not the actual ones tossed into the river.

And then Viganò has bis most scathing criticism yet of the reign and teaching of Pope Francis: “For more than six years now we have been poisoned by a false magisterium, a sort of extreme synthesis of all the ambiguous Conciliar formulations and of the post-Conciliar errors that have been ceaselessly spread, without most of us realizing it…

“Thus, over the past few decades, the Mystical Body [of Christ, that is, the Church] has been slowly drained of its lifeblood [i.e., the truths of the faith] through an unstoppable haemorrhage: the sacred Deposit of the Faith has been gradually reduced to ruins, the Dogmas distorted, the Liturgy secularized and bit by bit profaned, the Moral Teaching sabotaged, the Priesthood reviled, the Eucharistic Sacrifice Protestantized and transformed into a Banquet meal…

“Now the Church is lifeless, covered by metastasis, devastated. The people of God grope, illiterate and robbed of his Faith, in the darkness of chaos and division. In recent decades, the enemies of God have progressively burned two thousand years of Tradition. With unprecedented acceleration, thanks to the subversive goal of this pontificate supported by the powerful Jesuit Apparatus, a deadly coup degrace is being prepared against the Church.”

The retired archbishop’s meaning is clear: the time for temporizing is over, the time for a confrontation has arrived.

Viganò then says Pope Francis has done something that Modernists do, “affirming what one wants to destroy, using vague and imprecise terms, promoting error without ever clearly formulating it. This is exactly what Pope Bergoglio does, with his dissolving amorphism of the Mysteries of the Faith, with the doctrinal approximation that is proper to him, through which he ‘hybridizes’ and demolishes the holiest dogmas, as he did with the Marian ones of the Ever-Virgin Mother of God.”

And here is his conclusion: “The result of this abuse is what we now have under our eyes: a Catholic Church that is no longer Catholic; a container emptied of its authentic content.”

And so, the archbishop says, it is time, finally, to act.

And that action, Viganò says, begins by clinging to the Church, remaining in the Church, not leaving… and by praying.

“Now it’s our turn,” he writes. “Without misunderstanding, without letting ourselves be driven away by this Church of which we are legitimate children and in which we have the sacrosanct right to feel at home, without the hateful horde of the enemies of Christ making us feel marginalized, schismatic and excommunicated. Now it’s up to us! The triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary — Coredemptrix and Mediatrix of all graces — passes by way of her “little ones”… St. Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort asked himself: ‘But when will this triumph occur? God alone knows it.’ Our task is to watch and pray as ardently recommended by St. Catherine of Siena: ‘Alas! I die and I can’t die. Do not sleep in negligence anymore; use what is possible in the present time. Comfort yourself in Christ Jesus’ sweet love. Drown yourself in the Blood of Christ crucified, place yourself on the cross with the crucified Christ, hide in the wounds of the crucified Christ, bathe in the blood of the crucified Christ’ (Letter 16).”

Viganò concludes: “The Church is shrouded in the darkness of modernism, but victory belongs to Our Lord and to his Bride [the Church]. We want to continue to profess the perennial faith of the Church in the face of the roar of Evil that besieges Her. We want to watch with Her and with Jesus, in this new Gethsemane of the end of all times — to pray and to do penance in reparation for the many offenses inflicted on the Church and on Our Lord.”

The text of the archbishop is signed as follows:

+ Carlo Maria Viganò

Archbishop. tit. of Ulpiana

Apostolic Nuncio

19 December 2019

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